Fault-Tolerant Coverage Control of Multiple Satellites: A Differential Graphical Game Approach

Abstract

This paper considers the regional coverage problem of multiple satellites with full consideration of the coupled position-attitude characteristics, the optimality, and the cooperation among satellites. In the fault-free case, a configuration condition of satellite formation flying (SFF) is established under which the desired coverage configuration is designed; In the presence of completely failed satellites, a configuration adjustment scheme is provided such that the coverage tasks of failed satellites are handed over to other healthy ones; Based on the proposed configurations, a distributed near-optimal coverage controller that achieves the optimal coverage control goal is designed for each satellite by utilizing the differential graphical game theory and the approximate dynamic programming (ADP) method. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.